Another Putnam County student has been arrested for making threats at school, Eatonton Police Chief Howell Cardwell said.
On Thursday, Sept. 19, a Putnam County Middle School teacher overheard the threat and immediately reported it to Principal Monica Macklin, who called Cardwell.
“The offender was arrested at school and is being detained at Wilkes Regional Youth Detention Center,” Cardwell said. “The threat was made against another student, not at the school, just against another student.”
When asked the nature of the threat, Cardwell said the student told the other student, “If he had a gun, he would shoot him.”
When officers met with the student, who was waiting in the principal’s office, he admitted to making the threat and told them he knew he had done wrong.
“He knows nowadays you can’t just do that,” Cardwell said.
According to Cardwell, the child who made the threat will be 13 years old next month. He has already had his first appearance hearing in juvenile court, and the judge sent him back to RYDC, where he is being held until his trial.
This marks the fourth time local authorities have handled threats at the middle school. On Sunday, Sept. 15, an anonymous statement was posted on social media that somebody was going to shoot up the middle school the next day. Cardwell, Putnam County Sheriff Howard Sills, and PCSO Detective Lt. Harry Luke traced the names of the posts until they found the 11-year-old who had made the threat, and there was no credibility to it at all, Sills said.
“It was just a rumor about the kid from Thursday,” he explained.
The Thursday threat was another social media post on Sept. 12. That post was made by a mother who said her child learned from another child that another child heard someone was bringing a gun to school.
Sills, Cardwell, and Luke worked with school officials to find each child in the chain of rumors until they found the one who supposedly made that threat.
That student was suspended from school.
He told officers he got on the bus to go home, put on his earphones, listened to music all the way home, and didn’t talk to anyone.
Cardwell said school officials and law enforcement officers watched the school bus video, and what they saw confirmed his story. No arrest was made because the threat could not be corroborated with evidence.
An arrest was made, however, in the first threat. On Sept. 5, a 14-year-old threatened another student on social media. The student making the threat did not live in Putnam County but was attending school there at the time.
“He did not threaten the entire school. It was just directed at one particular student,” Cardwell said. “That 14-year-old was charged with terroristic threats and is in custody at RYDC.”